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Chapter 5 Findings
The observations revealed that staff did interact in a friendly, approachable
manner:
“Staff enter the room/ward and say ‘good morning’ in a warm,
friendly tone.”
(Obs – Day 2: 07.30-09.30hrs)
When family visit they often use the time to do little jobs for their
relative or to help out:
“Every day I come up to shave him and do my own little things. I
don’t expect a nurse that has a lot of work to do to come in and
shave him and I come up and put cream on his face and I look after
those things and that’s a very small input in comparison to other
stuff the nurses do because there are times when I come up and
maybe they are changing his diapers or things like that and they’re
things that I wouldn’t be capable of doing and sure enough people
would be capable of doing it.”
(F01) (Barthel 8)
It was observed:
“There is one male resident being helped with his dinner by his
wife.”
(Obs – Day 1: 12.30-13.30hrs)
Many family participants felt that the proximity of their relative’s care
facility was a big factor in how often they could visit:
“The fact that my husband is now much nearer, and I don’t have to
travel the distance to visit him.”
(F03) (Barthel 8)
It is also possible that regular visiting keeps the resident in touch with
their home life and a total of 12 visitors were observed on Day 2 of the
observations:
“My father at one stage he said, ‘you get to a certain age now I
think they just send you off on a trip to Dublin and I think they
shoot you or something!’ So I just wondered did he feel he was just
left. That could have been when he went in there first he probably
thought his family just left him.”
(F04) (Barthel 2)